Bulletproof
by On The Moon At Last
Summary: Laurel Lance lost a year of her life to the demon Ruby, but now she was home. Physically, anyway. Horrid flashbacks and nightmares plague her, and she can't remember anything but the horrors, but now and again she does remember a man with kind green eyes. Lost in a sea of despair, trauma, and angst, can she ever be herself again? Part 1 of the Bulletproof verse.
1. She Awoke

MAY 15, 2008

She awoke on a hardwood floor in a home she didn't know. She remembered all of it: the actions she didn't want to take and the words she didn't want to say but actions and words that _the thing_ made her do and say. For a whole year, such was her life. Did she really remember all of it, or was that just what her shell-shocked consciousness wanted her to believe? She feared the unknown and having chunks of her memory gone most definitely constituted the unknown. She recalled her name easily enough: Laurel. Dinah Laurel Lance, born April 10th, 1985 to Quentin and Dinah Drake Lance. She has a sister. Sara. But where was she, Laurel, now? What town, what city, what state or commonwealth? What year was it, what day, what hour, what minute? Finally sitting up, Laurel stood and walked over to the window. It was night and the moon was high in the sky. She guessed it to be around 10 pm.

"Hello?" She squeaked. No answer. The house was deathly quiet.

How was she going to figure out how to get back home to Starling? Was she even in Seattle anymore?

"Freemont." Laurel vaguely recalled something about "Freemont". Was that a name? Yes! Yes, it's a name! The name of the family that lives in this house. "Hello," she tried again and still received no answer. With no other recourse, Laurel found the nearest exit and walked out of the house.

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Quentin didn't know how to feel. His youngest daughter had been lost at sea the year before and his eldest took off after behaving unnervingly out-of-character. His wife and the mother of his daughters packed her bags and just left without much of an argument occurring between them. Not for Quentin's lack of trying, but primarily due to her not leaving much room for argument. For the past near-400 days, he had been alone in this house with only himself for company. The bottle and the dusty old television were his only friends when he wasn't off the job. He had thrown himself into his detective work for the past year-and-change, he drank himself to sleep, and he watched mind-numbing television all morning and afternoon on his rare days off but nothing helped. He had begun to think nothing ever would help, that he could never be okay again. Of course, he wasn't mad at himself for the dissolution of his marriage. Sure, part of him blamed himself for it (he wasn't around much in the months leading up to the event), but playboy extraordinaire Oliver Jonas Queen was the true impetus of his current lack of a satisfying existence. Sara had been seduced by his charms, her own sister's boyfriend for crying out loud, and shipped off with him on a boat. When Laurel found out, she was… well, devastated was an understatement. And worst of all the young girl stopped acting like herself not long after. Laurel stopped attending classes at SCU. She was on track for a slightly delayed graduation and she had planned on attending grad school with an emphasis in law. She wanted to be a lawyer, to help people from the other side of the justice coin. A noble ambition, and she just threw it all away? He couldn't grasp it. She started acting out, getting in fights over stupid things and having arguments over the pettiest of differences. She also started swearing a bit more than he was comfortable with. She started calling herself "Ruby" about a month before… before she just up and vanished, like her mother.

He was just about to chug the rest of his Coors Light when there was a harried knock, more like a hard rapping, on the door. "Who is it?" He called out.

"Daddy," came a tiny voice that he remembered all too well. Bursting up from the couch, he flung open the door. Whatever the thing was that had made Laurel act the way she had before she left, it wasn't his baby girl. Maybe it was still there and it was just playing with him? His posture told Laurel all of these reservations and more. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her clothes were dirty and torn.

"Daddy, please. It's me. It's Laurel," she croaked before passing out. He caught her before she hit the floor and carried her inside.

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When Laurel came to, she was finally in familiar surroundings. Quentin sat next to her on the couch, but not too close as to scare her upon her awakening. He asked her a volley of questions: _Where was she?_ She couldn't remember where she had been for most of the last year. _How did she get home?_ She hitchhiked all the way from New Harmony, Indiana. Laurel appeared dazed, confused, and it concerned Quentin to no end.

"Are you gonna finish that?" She mumbled in the general direction of his beer. Laurel grabbed his beer anyway, chugged the remainder, and trudged off to her bedroom. Quentin quietly trailed behind, and watched as she plopped down onto her bed, curled into a fetal position. She didn't sleep, though. No, no. Any hopes of sleep were dashed by the nightmares, the flashbacks. The horrible things Ruby made her do, but the bright spots were with the tall man with green eyes and a kind smile. That and his brother. Who were they? Did she know them? It didn't matter to her. All she cared about was that she was finally home. Quentin was glad of it as well, and immediately called Dinah. His ex-wife, however, was concerned. She said she would be on her way as soon as possible, but her tone told Quentin that she most likely would not be coming at all. What the hell kind of parent just abandons their family like that? Quentin could not understand it in the slightest, but his focus was on the family that he did have now. His baby girl, Laurel, had arrived home safely. Not sound, but safe. They could figure out the sound part later. At least they hoped they could. That would be ideal. Perhaps not realistic, but ideal.

Laurel was numb for days, going through the motions of life. Quentin tried to get her to talk about her experiences, but the little pieces here and there that she could recall were hellish. No pun intended. She didn't want to burden him with her horror stories, for him to worry.

"Daddy," she asked one evening at dinner, "where's Sara? Where's my sister? I need to see her."

"Baby…" his voice trailed off. It hit her. She remembered now, and it was like hearing it for the very first time all over again. She was angry, first of all. She cleared her side of the table with one fell swoop of her arms, a horrendous, heart-wrenching cry of "No! No! No, no, NOOO!" tearing itself from her body, and Laurel fell to the dining room floor, a shivering blubbering mess. Quentin fell, too, and they sobbed together.

All they had was each other now, and they would have to do their best with it. Was Laurel as bulletproof as her dad always thought she was? Maybe not. Could she ever be the same person she used to be? She highly doubted it.


	2. Why Does Suffering Happen

**Chapter 2: Why Does Suffering Happen?**

Laurel claimed to not remember, to save her father and friends further heartache. Joanna hovered. Normally, such hovering would be considered by Laurel to be sweet and demonstrative of concern. Quentin constantly oscillated between practically non-present and the most nurturing father figure anyone could ever ask for. Laurel, for her part, swung between wanting to be smothered with love and affection and completely isolating.

It was a lie. She remembered all of it, every single microsecond, because Ruby believed it would somehow be less traumatizing if she was awake. Ruby was more benevolent than the average demon, but she was still a demon. A monstrous, sadistic, snarky demon. How does one go about picking up the pieces after losing a year of one's life? It seemed impossible in the face of Laurel's suffering. She did a lot of that lately, suffering, with only Quentin knowing even a partial extent of his daughter's trauma. He knew she had been gone and he knew that she was hurting from whatever she experienced while she was away. It killed him more and more each day, even as Laurel refused to get help.

"I can do this on my own, I don't need anyone except you, Joanna, and Tommy," she said one night, staring into the fireplace. It didn't even have a fire going, she was just staring into it. By the looks of things, she hadn't moved from that couch all day. Glancing around, trying to think of something to say, something to make everything okay again, the law enforcement officer couldn't help but notice no less than four empty beer bottles strewn across the floor, with a half-empty champagne occupying the coffee table in front of his daughter. His daughter, his firstborn, his baby girl. How could she have fallen so far? What the hell could have happened to her to facilitate this decent into… whatever-this-is? Not knowing what the ever-loving fuck else to do, Quentin sat on the couch beside Laurel.

"Baby-"

"Why does suffering happen? Dad? Why? What did we do that is so awful to warrant this suffering?"

"You talkin', like, philosophically? Theologically? What?"

"In general," her voice is hollow, worn out, as if she'd been screaming all day.

In truth, she had. She'd gone out to a secluded place, a safe place, in the woods just outside the city and just screamed her guts out, screamed and sobbed and hit things until she felt as though she had shredded her vocal cords. The young woman proceeded to go to the nearest urgent care facility, get bandaged up, and go home. That's where her beloved daddy found her. Quentin hated himself for not noticing the bandaged hands sooner, but as he moved to touch and inspect them, Laurel drew her arms close into her, curling up into a scared and almost-fetal position on the couch. Yet she continued to not look at her father and instead focused her sight on the fireless fireplace.

"Why does suffering happen? Why did all this happen to me? Why did it have to be our family that got royally fucked up?"

"I…" Quentin's voice trailed off. He had no response. Laurel sighed, grabbed the champagne, and retired to her bedroom. Not for lack of her father's standing and blocking her way, of course, but the look she shot him was enough to make him back down against his better judgment.

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Tommy and Joanna sat and slept on the floor outside Laurel's locked room for most of the next week. Laurel herself hardly exited the small space except to use the bathroom. It killed them both that she wouldn't let them do more for her, but they felt their mere presence was more than enough for the time being. Nothing had 'happened' yet. If only they knew of the dreams. The dreams, the horrid dreams! Laurel had them nightly and while they were clearly taking a toll on her sleep, she had refused to divulge the contents of said night visions. One such dream resulted in a quite fitful slumber, excessively more fitful than most. Most dreams were flashbacks, but this was something else. Something newer and darker, doubtless a result of her mental state, a product of the ungodly and terrifying anxiety and fear she had to constantly push down in the weeks since her return to reality and humanity.

" **Hello?" Laurel called out in the darkness of the forest. She felt like she knew this forest, or maybe she would know it in the future? Either way, it was dark, hot, the air was thick. She didn't like it. In fact, she despised it. She despised the only other occupant of the forest even more. She saw the girl every night. Every single night. Most nights, it was Ruby. Snarky, belittling, abusive. But that wasn't Ruby. Ruby took control over her body without her consent, a gross violation to be sure, but Ruby and Laurel got along as well as two entities in such a situation could. Tommy and Joanna had decided to she had developed some form of Stockholm Syndrome in regards to the "delusion" they all automatically assumed Ruby to be. But Laurel knew the truth. Ruby had done a horrible thing to Laurel, but Ruby was never as bad to her as the monster in her dreams. A monster of whose true nature Laurel was keenly aware: it was her fear, her pain, her trauma manifested in Ruby's form. Her form. She hated herself so much.**

" **Hello?" She tried again. And Ruby turned around, smirking that demented smirk she wore in every dream.**

" **Back for round forty, little girl? Huh?" She wore the jacket and jeans Laurel woke up in that mid-May evening.**

" **What you did was wrong. All those people."**

" **The demon-possessed schmucks? They received mercy compared to the objective hell that was their mean-suit-ness. Some people are strong enough to exorcise the demon on their own, force it out. Make it head out like a baby. But not you. No, no, cupcake, cuz you're weak and afraid of the world. Quentin and Dinah Lance may have been shit parents, okay so mommy dearest still is, but they didn't teach you to be a weak and whiny little shit. 'Oh, Ruby, nooo! Don't do it! You're so bad!' Boo-fucking-hoo, sweetheart, I-"**

" **You're not Ruby. You're me and you look like her."**

" **Ding-dong, bitch. You're not gonna amount to anything. You're pathetic. You couldn't even get Oliver to stay with you. You broke up and then got back together. What the fuck, L?" She fashioned the shape of an 'L' with her thumb and forefinger and pressed it against Laurel's forehead. "Hey, now, you're a all-star."**

" **Shut up."**

"' **Shut up'. What are you, five? Grow a pair. Oh, wait, you won't. You can't. Because you're too afraid. Oliver left you, knocked up some rando, then got with your sister behind your back. 'Run, run the fuck away from Laurel' seems to be the sign that comes with every molecule of your being. When you have kids, you're gonna be a shit mom. You're gonna fuck them up like your parents did to you."**

" **You're not Ruby, you're not Ruby, you're me, you're me and I can get past you," Laurel repeated throughout the Other's little speech, though her resolve cracked and faded the longer its torment continued.**

 **Oliver got someone pregnant and didn't tell her? Oh lord. Maybe she didn't really know Oliver the way she thought she did.**

 **The darkness surrounded them, enveloped them like an evil hug, until it was only Laurel and the Other. When it was just the two of them, this Other stared at her with the most wicked jet-black eyes much like Ruby's. This personification of her disease, her mental illness, smirked at her and suddenly it grew. It got taller, bigger, like the 50-foot monsters in old horror movies like** _ **Godzilla**_ **or** _ **Attack of the 50-Foot Woman**_ **. Laurel, in response, cowered as the Other scooped her up as though she were one of Sara's toys and dropped Laurel down its open waiting throat.**

Laurel bolted upright, covered in sweat. The comforter had been kicked off the bed and her body was tangled up in the sheets. Apparently she had called out, too, because the door was forced open. Tommy had a crowbar in hand and he was cradling her. There used to be days when Laurel Lance felt bulletproof. Maybe that was all an illusion. Maybe she wasn't so invincible.

Maybe she wasn't bulletproof after all.


End file.
